Tina Charles — “Bo Bo’s Party”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — December 23, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,823) Tina Charles — “Bo Bo’s Party”

Warning: If you are from France, read no further. For a weird, irritating, and “engagingly unconventional” (Jonny Whiteside, https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/tn-gnp-me-melanie-safka-20161004-story.html) song by Melanie that somehow became a number one hit in France* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_(singer)) is transformed into a weird and exhilarating song by future disco diva Tina Charles. Charles gives us a “[f]unky big beat mod A side” (happening45, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SfVPuToMNwY&list=RDSfVPuToMNwY&start_radio=1&pp=ygUmVGluYSBDaGFybGVzIOKAlCDigJxCbyBCb-KAmXMgUGFydHnigJ2gBwE%3D) that is a “brassy but over the top cover”. (Mark Deming, https://www.allmusic.com/album/dream-babes-vol-8-stockingtop-pop-mw0000781271) Of course it is — I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Genius sets out the lyrics as “You know, I’ve been bad, but I would be good instead Ah, if my man did half of the things that he said I wouldn’t have to go to the Bo Bo’s party” (https://genius.com/Melanie-bobos-party-lyrics) I thought they went “but I would be good in bed”.

Well, then I read Shore Fire Media saying the song is “about a woman haunting the back room at parties, in search of the attention her impotent husband cannot provide”. (https://shorefire.com/releases/entry/melanie-a-lullaby-rendition-of-ring-around-the-moon). And Mike Steeden writes:

It is back in the 1960’s when [Melanie] appeared on British TV. I’d never heard of her before. There Melanie was, 6pm, singing “Bobo’s Party”. There was my mother, horrified at the lyrics; and me, sat quiet, thinking the girl is wonderful.

https://lampmagician.com/2024/02/10/it-is-nice-sometimes-somebody-says-something-a-tribute-to-a-one-girl-band-melanie-safka/

I was right!

Tim Sentra writes about Tina Charles:

A singer with a powerful voice suited to many styles, Tina Charles traded in a career as a busy session singer and struggling solo artist to become one of the first mainstream disco stars . . . . [But d]espite her talent and flexibility as a singer, her career was unable to weather the demise of disco . . . . Her first single, the Northern soul-leaning “Nothing in the World[]” . . . featured Elton John [see # 175, 1,598] on piano. Further singles like 1969’s “In the Middle of the Day” and “Good to Be Alive,” along with 1970’s “Bo-Bo’s Party,” didn’t do much on the chart. They did get her noticed by the BBC and she began appearing on The Two Ronnies show, then scored slots on tours by Tom Jones [see #330, 380, 1,691], Mud and Engelbert Humperdinck. . . . [S]he got a job recording vocals on the Top of the Tops series of albums where anonymous artists cover contemporary hits. She . . . put in more studio time as a session vocalist, memorably backing Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel on their 1975 hit single “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me).” She had previously sung in an unrecorded band called Northern Lights with Martin Jay; the pair reteamed in 1975 under the name Airbus and issued a single, “Bye Love,” that caught on once DJs flipped it over to find the disco-fied “I’m on Fire.” It was reissued as a single, the band rebranded as 5000 Volts, and the song headed toward the top of the charts around the globe, reaching the Top Five in the U.K. and the Top 30 in the U.S. Charles quickly left the group for a solo career and teamed with producer Biddu, who was red hot following the chart success of Carl Douglas’ massive hit “Kung Fu Fighting.” He cast her as a powerful disco diva and she filled the role perfectly, starting with the 1975 single “You Set My Heart on Fire.” While that song was moderately successful, her monumental disco anthem “I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Loves to Dance)” reached number one on the U.K. singles charts in February 1976 and scored in the upper reaches in many countries. . . . An album . . . was released in March of 1976. Charles began playing live shows . . . A second album . . . which was made up of the same mix of uptempo disco tracks and ballads, followed before the end of 1976. It spawned two hit singles, the title track and “Dr. Love.” The following year she issued [another] album and three of its singles placed on the U.K. charts: “Rendezvous” and a medley of “Love Bug,” and the oldie “Sweets for My Sweet” . . . ; most notable, however, was the following year’s cover of Jimmy James’ hit “I’ll Go Where Your Music Takes Me.” The decline of disco’s popularity took a toll on Charles’ career and after one more album in 1980 . . . she began a slow fade from the music scene to raise a family.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tina-charles-mn0000501852#biography

Melanie recalled that:

My career first really took off in France with “Bobo’s Party” — that title just sounded so right with a French accent[. ] I was at the Olympic Theater in Paris, co-billed with Gilbert Bécaud, who was like the Sinatra of France. He introduced me on stage there and I really took off.

https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/tn-gnp-me-melanie-safka-20161004-story.html

* Ian Walker writes that:

“Bobo” is an abbreviated form of the words bourgeois and bohemian, suggesting a fusion of two distinct social classes, the counter-cultural, hedonistic and artistic bohemian, and the white collar, capitalist bourgeois. The term would be popularized by author Robert Brooks who used it to describe the 1990s successors of the yuppies, who were often of the corporate upper class, claimed highly tolerant views of others, purchased expensive and exotic items, and believed American society to be meritocratic. But “Bobo”, short for “bourgeoise bohème”, was a common appellation in France long before that. All the more reason for Bobo’s Party to become a number #1 hit on the French international charts months before Melanie came to the attention of the wider world with Woodstock.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AppreciatingMelanieSafka/posts/1307111746028481/

Here is Melanie:

Here is Melanie singing for bemused French octogenarians. Were they the ones buying the 45?!

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